Negative Association between Seed Dormancy and Seed Longevity in Bread Wheat

Abstract

Many organisms have dormant stages with an extension of their life span to increase longevity, and deeper dormancy is usually related to greater longevity. In cereal crops, seed dormancy is significantly associated with pre-harvest sprouting tolerance during seed development, as seed longevity is a valuable trait for seed banks and providing reliable crop seeds to farmers. In this study, we evaluated both seed dormancy and longevity in bread wheat based on germination and artificial aging tests. According to phenotypic clustering analysis, relative germination rate/potential and relative seedling vigor index were more effective to indicate seed longevity than relative electrical conductivity in wheat, while all the four investigated phenotypes of relative germination potential, relative germination rate, germination index and degree of seed dormancy fit well as a reflex of wheat seed dormancy. In the correlation analysis, the germination level of newly harvested grain negatively reflected its degree of seed dormancy, while the germination ability of grain after artificial aging reflected its seed longevity. However, in contrast to the current opinion in plant, seed dormancy was significantly negatively correlated to seed longevity in our study, and it was not an accidental phenomenon, for that the majority of accessions with high degree of seed dormancy had short seed longevity. To our knowledge, this is the first to report the negative association between seed dormancy and longevity in cereal crops. It would lead to further concerns about how to breed wheat with both prolonged seed longevity and deep dormancy to avoid pre-harvest sprouting.